Thoughts on editing for print and digital media

word choice

The Associated Press recently announced a significant change in its style on abbreviations for U.S. states. The change takes effect today (May 1).

For decades, the AP Stylebook called for editors and writers to abbreviate state names when they accompanied the names of towns and cities. Example: “She drove from Macon, Ga., to Roanoke, Va., in seven hours.”

There were exceptions, of course. Some cities were deemed significant enough to stand alone. Some state names were so short that they were never abbreviated.

The new style recommends spelling out all state names in story text and, when possible, in headlines. So we’d edit the earlier example like this: “She drove from Macon, Georgia, to Roanoke, Virginia, in seven hours.” But the abbreviations will remain in datelines, captions and lists.

Not everyone is on board with the change, which AP says reflects a more global view of editing. The McClatchy-Tribune wire service said it would ignore the new style, as did McClatchy’s Washington bureau. Gerri Berendzen, a copy editor at the Herald-Whig in Illinois, said on Twitter that newspaper would also keep the old style.

As the writer and editor for this blog, I use AP style, so I will go along with this change. Of course, you are free to do otherwise, and I will respect your choice. After all, stylebooks are made up of suggestions, not commandments.

So no more Mo. A fond farewell to Fla. I’ll remember you, Calif. We’ll see less of each other from now on.

Students in JOMC 457, Advanced Editing, are writing posts for this blog this semester. This is the last of those posts. Stephanie Zimmerman is a junior at UNC-Chapel Hill double majoring in music and journalism.

It is an editor’s job to make writing accessible to readers. The writing must be clear, factually accurate and stylistically and grammatically consistent. But how much emphasis should editors really place on grammatical and stylistic consistency in the age of the Internet?

Look on any social media site, and you’ll probably find an abundance of grammatical errors. Some errors, of course, cannot be overlooked because they obscure the meaning of a sentence. However, there are many common mistakes people make that do little to obscure meaning.

For example, an error that people often make unknowingly is the distinction between quantities: number vs. amount, less vs. fewer and over vs. more than. People using “number” and “amount” interchangeably is one of my peeves, but the distinction really doesn’t change the meaning of a sentence to make it unrecognizable (which is probably why people so often confuse the use of those words).

“Number” is used to describe a definitive quantity that could, theoretically, be counted: “The number of people waiting in line for tickets is outrageous.” But if you were to replace the word “number” with “amount” in that sentence, it would make just as much sense to the reader: “The amount of people waiting in line for tickets is outrageous.”

Why do we continue to make the distinction in our writing? Well, that’s the rule, obviously. But isn’t our goal as editors to make things understandable for the reader? If the reader can understand the sentence just as easily, why bother changing it?

Part of the reason is consistency. It is important to have a style to follow so as not to confuse or turn off readers. For example, some stylebooks allow the serial comma, while others forbid it unless the clarity of the sentence is at stake. Each is acceptable practice, but using the serial comma inconsistently seems unprofessional to readers and looks like an editorial mistake.

From a linguistics standpoint, people often argue that all forms of the English language are appropriate if they make sense to the reader. They also cite language change as a reason to not worry so much about distinctions that people often ignore. Michaela Neeley, a linguistics student at UNC-Chapel Hill, says that since language is constantly evolving, sticking to outdated rules that most people overlook causes writers and editors to be behind the rest of the population with language rules and practices.

It is true that stylebooks and even dictionaries sometimes take a while to catch up with the rest of society. The online Merriam Webster dictionary still uses a hyphen in the word “e-mail,” but language has changed so that it is more common to see the word without the hyphen today.

So where do editors stand on the issue? Where should the line be drawn between outdated, old-fashioned grammar rules and incorrect usage that is becoming incorporated into the mainstream English vocabulary? Is it OK to be grammatically incorrect as long as it doesn’t affect readers’ ability to understand what you are saying?

Grammatical distinctions exist for a reason. Even if readers understand what you’re saying, inconsistency looks unprofessional, and even if they know what you’re trying to say, some readers may be put off when you use what they were taught was the incorrect use of words such as “number” and “amount.”

However, stylebooks are beginning to eliminate some of the distinctions I mentioned earlier. In the newest edition of the Associated Press Stylebook, it is now acceptable to use the word “over” when referring to quantity.

As far as when style and grammar changes should occur, I think it is better to proceed with caution. It would help publications to know their audiences in order to better gauge when to make stylistic changes, but being behind the times stylistically is usually better than being hasty to jump on language changes that may not yet be accepted by the majority of readers.

Students in JOMC 457, Advanced Editing, are writing guest posts for this blog this semester. This is the third of those posts. Marisa DiNovis is a junior English and editing & graphic design major at UNC-Chapel Hill, and a native New Yorker. She is copy desk co-editor at The Daily Tar Heel and an editorial intern at Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill. A life spent reading? That’s the dream.

In my daily life, I am frequently reminded that my existence is veiled with a lens of grammatical correctness and style obsession — like last week when JOMC 457 class was canceled, and the note on the classroom door said: Today’s class is cancelled.

So this week, I’d like to take a moment to thank BuzzFeed for making public its company style guide as well as for perpetuating my “sorry, but it’s actually…” tendency.

The BuzzFeed style guide covers the company’s stylistic choices on the colloquialisms of everything from pop culture to profanity — all topics editors at The Associated Press and Chicago Manual of Style undoubtedly have opinions on, but that their professional print style guides lack.

As an editor hopeful, I can’t help but have an opinion on BuzzFeed’s guide. Here goes.

Disseminating the style guide was strategic for BuzzFeed on two counts — the content is precisely reflective of the site’s aesthetic and having shared its set of guidelines bolsters its consistency. And, for all of the skeptics on BuzzFeed’s credibility, the guide also includes more serious sections, such as the company’s corrections policy and guidelines for LGBT, transgender, abortion, immigration and rape and sexual assault terms.

For the latter, I give a round of applause. As it happens, BuzzFeed’s instructions for reporting and writing in an inclusive and unoffending way about the LGBT community and transgender issues far surpass the search results offered in the online AP Stylebook.

And not only does the AP lack a distinct section on these terms, but the print stylebook does not even list an entry for LGBT. Now in writing and editing intelligibly on LGBT issues, I wouldn’t discount deferring to BuzzFeed for the advising I might typically seek from the AP.

Auto-Tune? What am I supposed to do with that when I need it as a verb!? Sorry — ?! is what I meant to say.

CBGB? I had to Google it, and I still don’t know to what it refers.

On hyphenating ‘e’ products, BuzzFeed (and the AP, too), I stand with ‘email.’ The look of ‘e-book’ just doesn’t appeal to me.

Disclaimer: The problems I see with these style issues probably started when my parents gave me a less popular spelling of the name Marissa.

But I do digress. I’ve offered my opinion, but I don’t challenge BuzzFeed to change anything — I doubt the intention for this style guide, when it was made public, was that it be a universal set of guidelines. It’s simply how the company governs the style appropriate for its tone.

And when I — or any copy editor — need to make decisions on hippie versus hippy, whether to hyphenate supervillain, or how to discuss disembarking the “struggle bus,” it’s helpful to know BuzzFeed and the writers of its viral articles have weighed in.

Snow covered the field at Kenan Stadium in Chapel Hill, N.C., in January 2014. Was that the work of winter storm Leon?

Longtime readers of this blog may recall an exercise from my editing class in which students discuss unsettled or debatable style questions. Previous versions of the assignment have included “first-year student” vs. “freshman” and the now-retired “mike vs. mic.”

This semester, I added this question: Should our mythical publication, The Triangle Tattler, use the naming convention that The Weather Channel has come up with for winter storms?

Most students said no. These students said that winter storms are different from hurricanes and that the Weather Channel’s scheme seemed gimmicky and unnecessary. So Tattler style will be to delete names like Falco or Maximus should they appear in news stories that students edit this semester.

There was some dissent, however, with one student arguing strongly for raising awareness of winter weather and making individual storms more easy to identify now and for posterity. Another suggested a sentence like this in news stories: “The storm, sometimes known as Leon…” to help readers connect what they had seen on TV with what they were reading in print or online.

So what are some Triangle news organizations doing? UNC’s student newspaper has used the name of a winter storm in a headline and story, but The News & Observer and WRAL have not.

On Twitter, weather forecaster Nate Johnson points out that the National Weather Service does not recognize the Weather Channel’s names. You can read more about Johnson’s thoughts on the matter on his blog. His arguments are persuasive.

As an editor, I am unwilling to go along with this idea until the NWS endorses it. As a person, I prefer to blame all of the cold, snow and ice on a single villain. His name? Old Man Winter.

A letter to the editor to The News & Observer takes the Raleigh newspaper to task for this headline in its print edition: “Teachers fret over budget plans.”

The problem? The verb.

The letter writer, who is the head of the education department at Meredith College, perceives it as an insult: “The headline demeans the teaching profession. Teachers are not fretting; teachers have serious concerns and questions about major changes in N.C.’s spending on education.”

As a parent of a student in the Wake County schools and a resident of North Carolina, I share the reader’s concerns about the General Assembly’s cuts to public education. But I disagree that “fret” is pejorative.

Typical definitions of “fret” go like this: “to become vexed or worried” or “to be visibly anxious.” The educators quoted in this story reflect those feelings.

It helps headline writers that “fret” is a commonly used word that consists of just four letters. That’s probably why it appeared in that headline. It’s a suitable word choice and not a slight to teachers. There’s no need, therefore, to fret about this headline.

Howard Kurtz, a longtime observer and critic of the media, himself made news this week, leaving CNN for Fox News and trading “Reliable Sources” for “Fox News Watch.”

In reporting this move, many publications took the opportunity to point out Kurtz’s own shortcomings as a journalist. For example, a blog post Kurtz wrote earlier this year about gay NBA player Jason Collins was retracted because of “several errors” and “a misleading characterization.”

That’s certainly a relevant and timely detail. But a few publications took that a step further in their headlines, labeling Kurtz as “disgraced.” It’s probably predictable that The Huffington Post, known for its overheated headlines, was one of them. But it’s surprising that Bloomberg News also used that word to describe Kurtz. It revised the headline and omitted the word, but “disgraced” lives on in the URL for that story.

“Disgraced” indicates actions that are dishonorable or dishonest. I’ve used that adjective on this blog to describe John Edwards, the former senator whose political career and personal reputation imploded because of an extramarital affair. In journalism, I would be comfortable using “disgraced” to describe plagiarists and fabricators like Jayson Blair.

Kurtz has made mistakes, just as any person has, but they appear to be honest ones made from haste, not deception. And he has expressed remorse.

Those errors are, of course, especially embarrassing for someone who has made a career of analyzing the news media. But to my mind, “disgraced” does not match the level of the offenses.